Daybreak
by auroralies
Summary: Sakura wakes one morning to find herself in a rather peculiar situation, and it leaves her rather flustered.
1. You're All Wet

The original sexual tension between Kakashi and Sakura belongs to Masashi Kishimoto.

I'm quite excited about this story, truth be told. I feel like it has a lot of potential.

I hope you like it! :D

Please review, etc. x

* * *

Something rather hard abruptly stuck Sakura's left leg, waking her from her slumber. Mind still clouded peacefully in sleep, she buried her face further in the crook of her arm and willed the intrusion to go away. But her mind was finding itself more and more awake, not helped in the slightest by the loud, uninhibited snores coming from her left. It also didn't help that her blankets had seemed to lose their way in the middle of the night, and she was now lying on the cold and lumpy tent floor.

"Shuuupnaaarto," she mumbled, her voice muffled as her face was buried in her arm, blocking out the intrusive early-morning light the tent shone with. She kicked sleepily at his leg, which was still practically trying to burry itself into hers. With the amount of strength he pushed with, she was going to end up shoved into Kakashi-sensei's side. She struggled harder to push Naruto back into his designated sleeping area, but he didn't seem to be conscious enough to even feel her pushing him away. He snored on, if possible, even louder.

Team Kakashi was on their way back from a mission all the way out in the land of Birds. It had gone entirely successfully, but it hadn't been a particularly difficult mission. There were barely any wounds for her to attend to, and she had served more as a lookout than anything. But the mission was given to their team because the payment was rather large, and Tsunade didn't want to take any chances. Naruto concluded it was to compensate for the incredible cheapness of the last mission the land of Birds had called on Konoha for.

The team had stopped to rest for the night in the middle of a forest that seemed to be off their path of trajectory.

"If anyone is following us, it'll be harder for them to detect us in the middle of the woods," Kakashi-sensei had said, sounding logical enough to convince Naruto. But Sakura knew that he just didn't want to risk reaching a town and being bullied into purchasing hotel rooms.

With only one tent and three guys, there weren't many affable choices as to which part of the tent was to be hers. Sakura faintly remembered collapsing on the blankets with Sasuke to her left and Kakashi-sensei to her right. It didn't seem all to appropriate to sleep between a grown man and the former object of her (rather intense) affection, but she had been too tired to protest last night. Now it seemed like it was a good idea_ not_ to have protested, because at least she didn't have to sleep directly next to Naruto and his hyper nasal passages all night. Though, by the looks of it, it appeared that Sasuke decided the sleeping conditions of the forest around them would be considerably more favorable than those next to Naruto.

_He probably didn't want to sleep next to me, either,_ she realized, with small twinge of disappointment. She wondered if everything between her and Sasuke would ever be completely normal. He had never felt the need to placate her unrequited love for him and never cared about disguising his distaste, but sometimes she wondered if it had bothered him more than just a small nuisance. Sakura didn't like feeling like an unwanted fly, buzzing around his head, but she definitely didn't like feeling like something so awful that he would choose to sleep outdoors instead of next to her.

_Who am I kidding?_ She thought, coming to her senses, _It probably was just Naruto's fault, he snores so goddamn loud._

It had been years since Sakura had given up on Sasuke, and he was bound to have figured that out after all this time. Sakura was eighteen now, and all too set on finding someone who didn't treat her like a dirty animal in the underbrush.

As if on cue, there was a faint rustling to her right. She rubbed her eyes blearily, propping herself partially up on her elbows, twisting around to see if the tent flap at her feet was being opened. But halfway before her eyes reached the opening in the tent, they froze. Her eyes widened in shock, and all traces of tiredness immediately left her.

The rustling sound was coming from her sensei.

His hand was in his pants.

Sakura drew a sharp breath, squirming away from him as far as she could without pushing herself back into Naruto. But as far away as she moved her body, her eyes wouldn't budge. It was like watching a particularly bloody childbirth or something equally morbid—she just couldn't look away no matter how hard she tried.

_No, it's not morbid_, something in the back of her mind said. Just like a bloody childbirth, this was a completely natural part of life. And as she continued to be a voyeur, it became undoubtedly more enjoyable to watch. He actually looked… kind of beautiful. What little she could see of his face was dusted lightly pink, and his lips were slightly parted underneath his mask. He was obviously still asleep, in the middle of an uncontrollable (and apparently very arousing) dream. Sakura's immediate shock was beginning to wane.

She watched him with a steady curiosity. _Who is he dreaming about?_

It wasn't as if she had never thought about her sensei's personal life. She had often wondered if he was a generous lover, or if he was even sexually active at all. It wasn't really an unnatural curiosity—she was a teenage girl, and he was a fairly attractive (from what she could tell) man whom she spent a lot of time with. She doubted there were more than a handful of women in Konoha who _hadn't _wondered about Kakashi and how he was in bed.

She was unaware, at first, when her arm began to rise off the floor of the tent and her hand made its way to Kakashi's mask. Surely he wouldn't notice if she just tugged it down a bit and allowed him to breathe freely… Plus she would get to see the rest of his beautiful, flushed—

Soft, barely audible moans were beginning to find their way out of his body.

The breath in Sakura's throat hitched, and she immediately drew her arm back and finally squeezed her eyes shut, feeling very much like an intruder. _What was I thinking?_

No matter how appealing he looked with his hair tousled out around him and his body rising and falling ever so slightly to meet the thrusts of his hand, it was _wrong._ He was her sensei. She shouldn't be watching this, and she definitely should not be _enjoying_ it. She wondered if she could flee from the tent and pretend it had never happened. But she was too afraid—she was petrified—that as soon as she made to exit the tent, he would wake. She didn't want him to realize she knew he was jacking off in his sleep. Things would obviously get exceptionally awkward after that.

Heart beating unconventionally fast, Sakura quickly assessed the situation. Naruto's incessant snoring would _probably_ be loud enough to drown out the noise of her escaping through the tent flap, and if Kakashi was able to remain asleep after that much physical stimulation, there was clearly very little chance he would actually wake if she left…

Resolved, Sakura got to her feet swiftly, unzipping the tent flap as silently as she possibly could. Just when she was beginning to feel like she would get out of this situation freely, Naruto sighed sleepily and his snoring ceased. Sakura froze. Kakashi was still making little noises.

Sakura took one look at Naruto, immediately realizing that he hadn't woken after all, before turning back to the gap she had made in the tent flap. It was about a foot and a half long, but it would make too much noise to open it further. Feeling very panicky, Sakura dove headfirst through the gap with a surprisingly minimal amount of noise, even if she did land kind of awkwardly on the dirt outside. She heaved a sigh of relief, not bothering to close the tent flap back up.

As she stood and brushed herself off, Sasuke came wandering out of the dense forest surrounding the clearing in which they'd set up camp.

"You're finally up," he observed.

"I hadn't noticed," was all she replied. She could only hope now that, if Naruto woke first, he was dumb enough to not realize what Kakashi-sensei was doing. She hadn't thought to cover him up with a blanket… If anything, she had wanted to uncover him a little more…

Sasuke simply raised an eyebrow at her. Sakura didn't even notice. Her mind was still back in the tent with the hand in Kakashi-sensei's pants.

"Well?" He said, after a long pause, "Are the others coming?"

"One of them is…" Sakura mumbled, still far too distracted to hold a proper conversation. She shook her head, trying to empty it of the image that just wouldn't go away. His body shaking slowly, mouth agape…_No, Sakura!_

When she had finally managed to abolish the rather clear picture, it was only to be replaced by the ghost of his soft moans. She suddenly realized her mouth tasted like blood, she had been biting her lip so hard.

"I'm… going to go find some breakfast," she declared. _More like, some cold water I can douse my entire head in._

Sasuke nodded. As Sakura launched herself into the forest, she hoped Sasuke wouldn't go back in the tent. _He_ certainly wasn't dumb enough not to realize what Kakashi-sensei was doing. A glance over her shoulder told her that he had gone off through the trees as well, and she breathed a sigh of relief. She didn't fancy having to explain the situation, and was very glad that she didn't have to. If the awkwardness weren't enough, she still felt as though she had intruded on something private in Kakashi's life and it was now her secret to protect.

* * *

As she flew back trough the trees towards the tent, Sakura's head was much clearer. She had relieved a lot of her tension by jumping into a nearby (awfully convenient) stream, clothes and all, and was now able to think quite a bit more logically.

_It wasn't like he had done it deliberately_, she told herself. He had been dreaming, and there was little control one could possess over a dream. Sakura vaguely remembered having a dream in which she kissed Ino, which, if not totally disturbing and vomit inducing, had absolutely no reflection on her waking thoughts.

She had known Kakashi-sensei for six years—and even if she hadn't she'd have known he wasn't like that. Sure, Kakashi spent a lot of time reading his beloved Icha Icha books, but he wasn't a pedophile. There is no way he would've purposefully jacked off in a communal tent with a bunch of kids.

_You're eighteen_, the voice in her head reminded her. They were all adults. He wouldn't be a pedophile even if he _had_ been deliberately coming on to her. _Not that you would mind all that much, if he were… _Sakura giggled in spite of herself. The whole situation was much more amusing now that she was no longer in danger of being caught.

Her giggles died away, thankfully, by the time she reached the clearing. Everyone was up, bags packed and tent away, roasting lumps of what she could only identify as a skinned and bloody animal.

"Did you go swimming or something?" Naruto asked, squinting at her. Sakura looked down at her clothes, wondering if she should've dried off more.

"You're all wet," Kakashi pointed out. Sakura opened her mouth, feeling her ears turn very red. _It's your fault, dammit, _she thought. Sakura had a feeling that she was going to start taking everything this man said in the wrong way.

"I… fell in a stream," she said shortly, leaving out the fact that she haddeliberatelydone so. It was very hard to keep her gaze away from Kakashi, especially when she could see him staring intently at her in her peripheral vision. She coughed lightly.

"Can I get some of that?" She asked Naruto, choosing to sit next to him and as far away from Kakashi as possible.

She knew it was irrational. She knew that she had no reason to avoid her sensei, because as far as he knew, nothing at all had happened. But when you wake up in the early morning and find your teacher practically moaning in your ear, it's quite hard to look at him straight in the face less than an hour later. Sakura was having enough trouble struggling with the blush that was threatening to spread over her face.

_Think un-sexy thoughts,_ she told herself,_ think about this bloody animal being killed._ But that only brought up images of Kakashi hunting, which turned quite sexy quite fast.

"Sure!" Naruto said, completely oblivious to the fact that anything was going on. Sasuke glanced at her curiously, as if to wonder what had happened to the breakfast she had gone out to get, but appeared to lose interest after a few seconds.

"We should probably get going very soon," Kakashi said, as he removed his bloody, roasted animal carcass from the fire. Sakura felt a slight shiver go down her spine, wondering how she had never noticed the allure of his voice before. Her mouth tasted like blood again, and cursed herself silently for biting her lip. Instead, her fingers found themselves tapping harshly against the large stump she was sharing with Naruto. _Is he going to take his mask off to eat that?_ Her tapping became faster, in time with the beat of her heart. She chanced a glance at her sensei, who hadn't stopped looking curiously at her and wasn't making any move to eat. She couldn't tear her eyes away from his.

"Here you go!" Naruto said, snapping her out of her daze. Feeling like it was a good thing that Naruto had distracted her, she watched him peel off a large chunk of the searing bloody flesh with his hands and hold it out to her.

…_Charming._

"Thanks," She mumbled half-heartedly, looking down at it without much care. It didn't look particularly appetizing, what with it oozing all down her arm, but Naruto was consuming his chunk with as much gusto as ever. It couldn't be that bad. Besides, it's not like she hadn't eaten worse things. As she took a bite, she looked up at Kakashi again. He had already finished eating, and was looking off in the distance with a ponderous expression in his visible eye.

_Damn! I missed it!_ Inner Sakura cursed Naruto for handing her the meat at the exact time when Kakashi pulled his mask down. She remembered back to when all three of them had been equally curious about what Kakashi hid under that mask. But as the boys grew, their curiosity seemed to evaporate. Understandable, as the only current reason she cared was because she was curious as to the exact shape his mouth had made when he w—_Sakura!_ _Get a hold of yourself!_

If she continued to gape at Kakashi, practically salivating, for much longer then _everyone_ was going to figure out something was up. She had an irrational feeling that even the passing squirrels were going to notice. Maybe even _Naruto_ would notice.

She returned to her bloody meat chunk. It wasn't too terrible.

"If we keep moving at this pace, we won't return to Konoha until well after midnight," Kakashi mused. Sakura didn't have to be told twice, she wanted to leave this clearing and the memories of what had happened in it behind. _That's not what you want_, the back of her mind told her, _you want to see it again._

Sakura very much wished her inner persona was tangible enough to strangle at that moment, and dropped the remains of her bloody meat chunk into the fire with more vigor than necessary.

"Awww! Why'd you do that?" Naruto wailed, but she paid him no mind.

"Let's get going, Naruto," she said, bossier than if she hadn't wanted to escape out from underneath Kakashi-sensei's gaze so badly. Shortly after she said it, she began to regret being so short with him. Naruto looked mildly forlorn. "Come on," she added, not unkindly.

The four of them took off eastward into the woods, choosing to jump leisurely from branch to branch instead of chancing the dank underbrush.

Sakura watched warily as Sasuke and Naruto charged ahead, seemingly racing each other. She didn't want to lose sight of them, but even she didn't have enough motivation to move with the speed they were.

That is, until Kakashi-sensei matched her pace and was right along side her. _Oh, damn_.

"I had a very interesting dream last night," he told her.

Sakura very nearly choked on her spit.

"Re-really?" Sakura squeaked, hoping against reason that he hadn't noticed that her voice was about ten octaves higher. She coughed into her fist, pretending to clear her throat. "What… was it about?" She asked, feigning disinterest. She was beyond curious as to know whom he had been dreaming about. Maybe she'd finally get some light shed into Kakashi's very private personal life.

"It was about you, actually," he said, turning to look at her with a smile in his eye. But she was no longer where she had been a moment ago. A burst of chakra had shocked its way through her body and the tree branch she had momentarily perched herself on had immediately snapped in half.

_What?! _

"Sakura?" she heard him call from above, his voice expressing mild concern.

She lay sprawled out in the bushes that had caught her fall. She blinked heavily, trying to reason with her brain. It could've been a _different_ dream. He hadn't told her that his sex dream was about her. And even if it hadn't been a different dream, it's not like he _wanted_ to dream about her. It was exactly the same as if he had been dreaming about Naruto or Sasuke.

Except it wasn't. At all. And he sure seemed to be enjoying it _quite a lot_ at the time.

"Is something the matter?" Kakashi asked, jumping down to the bush Sakura was attempting to free herself from. She felt her chest burning with embarrassment, and hoped he wouldn't say more. But of course he did. "You've seemed very flustered since this morning. Did something happen with Sasuke?"

"No!" she protested, annoyed. Sasuke was the _least_ of her concerns. But the playful look in her sensei's eye told her that he had just been teasing. "Let's go…" she mumbled, leaping back into the canopy again and taking after Naruto and Sasuke, who were long out of her sight.

"Sakura, you didn't answer my question," he pressed on. To his credit, he did seem genuinely worried about her.

_Of course he is,_ she thought, _I've been nothing but clumsy and distant since this morning_.

"I'm just worried," she said, which wasn't entirely untrue. She was worried that she was developing an unhealthy attraction to her teacher, who was fifteen years her senior. She was also worried that her teacher was having _sex dreams_ about her. And they were _interesting._ Not to say she minded too much, but it still made her extremely nervous.

"About the mission?" Kakashi pried, "Was there something we missed?"

"No, not at all," she said, shaking her head, "It's about my cat."

Well, that one _was_ entirely untrue. Sakura didn't even have a cat, but she prayed that Kakashi didn't know that.

"What's wrong with your cat?" Kakashi asked, unable to keep the slight amusement out of his voice. He obviously caught her lie_. _She should've suspected as much, Kakashi lied so much that it was probably second nature to him. Also, it was a stupid lie. She couldn't think properly when he was in her mind, messing up her usually orderly thoughts.

"Sensei, I think we should catch up to the boys," she said, rapidly increasing her pace in a vein attempt to get out of his vocal range. But if they were caught up to Naruto and Sasuke, there'd be less of a chance that Kakashi would be perpetually questioning her.

Kakashi sighed, but she could tell he wasn't ready to give up.

"Sakura, you know you can talk to me about anything, right?"

_Oh, yeah,_ _that'd be a pleasant conversation, _she thought,_ "You see, it's nothing big, I just woke up this morning to find you touching yourself and moaning and now I think I like you a bit too much." Yeah. Awesome. _

"I care about you, Sakura," he said, as if trying to soften her up.

Only problem is, it worked. Sakura felt her insides turn to butter. It pained her even more to leave him so clueless.

"I don't want to talk about it, sensei," she said, quietly. She kept her eyes straight ahead, but still took note that he was watching her with the same intensity that he was earlier by the fire.

"Okay," he breathed, finally resigning, "but if you change your mind…"

"I know," Sakura whispered into the forest.


	2. Flooded

When they finally neared Konoha, the light showers of rain they had begun to encounter had evolved into rain with such velocity that Kakashi felt like he was standing very close to a waterfall, if not directly underneath one.

He watched out of the corner of his eye as Sakura shivered slightly as she ran, shaking with cold water. She was as desolate as she had been all day.

Kakashi had woken up that morning with a cocktail of feelings. The first was an unyielding desire with unclear origins. The second was a weary displeasure with the fervor of Naruto's snores, and the third was mild curiosity, because upon opening a bleary eye, he noticed that Sasuke and Sakura were no longer in the tent.

But as he wondered what they were up to, something sparked the memory of his dream, and it came washing over him with not only the return of the unyielding desire, but an immense shame. Sakura had been hovering over him, clad scantily. Her whole body was covered in a dainty flush, and she had been whispering quite naughty things in his ear. He had been only the gentleman to comply with her requests.

The details of the dream (and, unfortunately, the ending) were blurred away from Kakashi's memory. He was left entirely unsatisfied and feeling very much like he had just raped his student.

_But she wanted it,_ he remembered. In fact, she had been all but begging for it, whimpering and moaning vulgarities in his ear. Kakashi stirred slightly at the memory, deciding that it was probably a good idea to go find some cold water to splash his face with. He had never felt like such a dirty old man in all of his life. What would Sakura think of him if she knew what he was dreaming about?

Deciding it would be better to just forget about the dream, he had left the tent to clean himself up.

Running, now, in the downpour just outside Konoha, Kakashi figured he had a very good idea as to what Sakura's problem was—it was him.

He was first given that feeling when she returned to the clearing from wherever she had gone, drenched in water and quite flustered. She had blushed furiously when he told her she was wet, and he didn't believe for an instant that she had accidentally fallen into a stream.

For a minute, Kakashi wondered if they had shared the same dream.

That was originally the reason that he brought up his _own _dream—he wanted to find out what kind of reaction it would bring out of her. After he she had gone all bright red and squeaky-voiced, he couldn't help himself—he wanted to see how much more he could push her. Kakashi got way more enjoyment than acceptable in the way that she was flustered so easily.

However, even after she had fallen out the tree, there was still the possibility that something else entirely was bothering her, affecting her reactions. When he admitted he was worried about her, she was unrelenting in giving away the reason behind her behavior. He didn't know what to do, or even if it was any business of his at all.

_Why do I care so much?_ He found himself wondering. It wasn't like him to dig so deeply into the thoughts of another. But there was something about Sakura that made him want to care, pulling him out of his usual apathy. Kakashi shook his head, scattering the raindrops that had settled in his hair. The team broke apart as they reached the village, running in their separate ways towards the shelter of their homes and apartments.

_I shouldn't have even brought up that dream_, he mused. As dreams do, it had all but disappeared by the end of the day. The longer he was awake the less he remembered, and now he was left with nothing but the memory of his arousal. It wasn't Sakura who had given it to him; it had only been a dream.

Kakashi reached his apartment with the resolution to never give that dream another thought. He unlocked his door on the third floor with his apathy renewed, wondering airily if he should start on the mission report now, or spend his evening in a warm bath with Icha Icha. He stood in his living room, reprimanding himself for being such a lazy fool, before he kicked off his shoes and began shedding his drenched Jonin jacket. His soaking mask was beginning to suffocate him with its dampness, and he began to struggle with the wet fabric that covered from the top of his nose to the bottom of his torso. But before he could make any real progress, there came a series of knocks on the window of his living room, barely heard over the downpour outside. 

By the time Sakura returned to her apartment, she was in a foul mood. The attraction and fascination she had felt towards her sensei departed as he did, and she was now nothing but disturbed. She couldn't believe she had gotten such enjoyment out of watching Kakashi-sensei in the throws of passion with his left hand, and she certainly couldn't believe he had brought it up afterwards.

Sure, he had no idea that Sakura knew the general premise of the dream, but admitting to your student that you had a dream about them isn't exactly acceptable, even if the dream _wasn't_ sexual. _What was he_ _thinking?!_

Sakura didn't bother to dry herself off immediately, choosing instead to leave a trail of water behind her as she dragged herself through the lobby.

"Sakura!" called the voice of her landlady, somewhere to her left. _Crap_, Sakura thought, _Maybe I should have dried off_…

But her landlady didn't sound displeased, as she should have. In fact, she sounded like _she _felt like the criminal in this situation.

"Yeah?" she asked, turning around slowly so as not to shake water in a large radius around her.

"Thank goodness you're finally back. They said you would be, but I was worried I would have to stay out here all night…" the landlady said, clearly having just been woken abruptly. Sakura noticed that she had spilled her coffee all over the desk.

"…is something wrong?" Sakura asked slowly, hoping she would just get on with it.

"Well… see," she began, hesitating. Her coffee dripped on the floor in a steady pattern. Sakura counted four drips before the landlady carried on, "The thing is… with all the rain we've been having… there has been somewhat of a flood."

"There's been… what?" Sakura asked, her mind taking an unusually long time to process what was being said.

"The roof hasn't been hanging up too well… and the top floor is almost entirely soaked." Sakura held her breath. _She _was on the top floor. The landlady continued, "Now… most of your stuff is okay, but I'm afraid you won't be able to stay in your apartment for a few days…"

_MOST of my stuff?! Could this day get any worse?! _Sakura looked around half-heartedly for some wood she could knock on,holding her temper with her breath. SHe waited for the landlady to continue.

"I'm sorry, honey, but there are no available rooms we can lend you… I'm… going to have to ask you if you can find somewhere else you can stay for a while." The landlady looked as though something in her vicinity was about to explode, and not without reason. Sakura was fuming.

_I really should've found some wood,_ she laughed at herself in spite of her anger. As far as days go, this was one of the worst in quite a while. First she woke up to Naruto's kicks and snores and her sensei masturbating, and then after some intense emotional harassing she had to travel _who knows how far_ by foot, only to arrive late at night to an apartment that had been flooded and most of her stuff probably permanently damaged. And _now_ she was faced with finding somewhere to spend the night, and the next few after that. Sakura took a deep breath, attempting to calm down.

She glanced at the clock. It was a little later than one in the morning, and there was absolutely no chance that either of her parents would provide her hospitality this late at night. _As if they would actually have considered it in the daytime,_ she thought bleakly. Her parents had never been the welcoming type, especially after their divorce. Her mother was always too busy canoodling with her boyfriend to pay Sakura any mind, and her father was always too busy being a lazy drunk. And never mind trying to get a hotel room or a new apartment, Sakura barely had enough to cover the rent and utilities for the cheapest apartment in all of Konoha.

A variety of faces flashed before Sakura's mind, and she ticked them off one by one. Naruto was too loud in his sleep, and barely had enough room for himself. Sasuke was the least hospitable person she had ever met. Ino's parents (whom she still lived with) weren't particularly fond of Sakura. She wondered dimly if Tsunade-sama had some room to spare in that large building of hers, before her thoughts landed upon Kakashi-sensei.

Sakura almost laughed out loud. There was no way she could be roommates with a man who was not only was fourteen years her senior, but jacked off to dreams of her. Even if he _was_ fairly attractive.

"Sa…Sakura?" the landlady hesitated again, clearly wishing Sakura would just take off so she could go to bed. Sakura pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes, waiting for stars to erupt and a clear choice to surface.

"How bad is my stuff?" Sakura asked, after a pause.

"Well… your clothes are all fine, but most of your furniture will be unrecoverable… and you didn't purchase insurance, so there isn't anything we can do…"

_How about give me a new dresser and a new bed out of pity?_ She thought, hopelessly.

"Don't you have anywhere you can go?" The landlady asked, looking only slightly worried. It was as if the heavens were mocking her. _If only Kakashi was able to keep his hand out of his pants, this would've been an easy decision_, she thought.

"Yeah. Don't worry, I know where I can stay," she said, though she really didn't.

"I'm sorry, Sakura. We've moved the remainder of your stuff to a dry location, but until we can get the floors replaced and the roof redone…" she trailed off, looking drearily at the coffee she had spilt, still dripping onto the floor. "Why don't you come back tomorrow morning and see if there's anything else you can recover? We can give you the rest of your stuff then." She was clearly trying to dismiss Sakura.

"Yeah, okay," she said, resigned. There wasn't anything she could do now, after all, and she was becoming ridiculously tired. She just wanted to strip out of her soaking clothes and crawl into her warm, comfortable bed. _Too bad it's water-damaged past repair,_ she thought, forlorn.

"Good night, then," the landlady waved at her, finally soaking up the coffee with a towel from under her desk. Sakura didn't reply. She just walked right out the door and back into the cold, pouring rain.

Because it was so late, she had nothing but the options of her teammates, the only ones she knew to be awake. Sasuke would be likely to murder her with his gaze if she asked, and Naruto would be disgustingly willing. She didn't really have a choice. Praying that the dream Kakashi-sensei had last wasn't a regular occurrence, she made her way through the downpour to his apartment.

She had been to his place only once before. It was before a rather long mission, she recalled. She, Naruto, and Sasuke had been waiting for Kakashi for about an hour and a half, and when he finally turned up and they were all geared up to leave, he had freaked out because he left one of his Icha Icha books behind. Sasuke had bullied her into tagging along with Kakashi-sensei as he ran back to get it, to make sure that he wouldn't get distracted on the way there or back and delay the mission any longer. It wasn't in a particularly nice part of town, she remembered, but what she had seen of the inside of his apartment had been pleasant enough.

She reached his building, wondering what she should even say. As she looked up at all the windows, she realized that it wasn't like she had to stay with Kakashi-sensei for the whole time she was out of an apartment. She would kip out on his couch for one night, and then first thing in the morning she would see Tsunade-sama about her living situation.

She hauled herself up the fire escape on the side, true ninja style, and reached a lit window on the third floor. Peering inside, she was glad to see that it was, indeed, Kakashi's place. She watched idly as he removed his soggy jacket, his back turned to her. When she realized that he was about to take off his shirt, she hastily swallowed her hesitation and knocked sharply on his window.

She watched as he turned around, looking soaked and irritated. He crossed the room quickly enough, and threw open the window despite the rain.

"…" Sakura didn't speak at first. She just stood there, one foot perched on the side of the fire escape. She was too busy staring at his nose. It was only slightly pointy, and very well defined. Sakura wondered vaguely of Michelangelo could've recreated it. It was the most attractive nose that she had ever seen, and Sakura had seen a lot of noses.

"Yes?" Kakashi asked after a while. He no longer looked irritated, but as tired as she felt. Sakura blinked up at him, tearing her gaze away from his nose. Kakashi seemed to realize what she was staring at, and pulled his mask up to cover his face as it usually did. His hitai-ite was dangling from his left fist, his left eye uncovered and open. She hadn't given it much thought before, but he probably didn't sleep every night with his mask and headband on, as he had in the tent the previous night.

"My apartment has been flooded," she told him, bluntly; none of the riffraff that her landlady had put her through. She watched as the wariness slid completely out of his eyes.

"Come in, then," he moved politely aside, and she climbed through the window frame, bringing what seemed like a hurricane of water along with her. But Kakashi-sensei was almost as wet as she was, so she didn't feel too terribly as her sandals squished an astonishing amount of water out on the plush carpet.

"You're all wet," he noted for the second time that day. She didn't even bother fighting the blush she felt creeping towards her cheeks. She was too tired to care.

"So are you," she replied with a yawn, trying not to gape openly at his muscles, clearly defined under his sodden black shirt.

"Mmm," he answered, echoing her thoughts, though with an entirely different meaning. Kakashi-sensei frequently took to humming with there was no witty response to be said.

Sakura looked around. The living room was cozy, with a large couch and a couple squashy-looking chairs. There were numerous shelves filed with porn (she could only presume)_,_ and various decorations hung on the walls that she would've appreciated had she been wide awake. The kitchen was off to her left, ending the plush, off-white carpet in an ugly sort of patchy tile. _Maybe it's supposed to look fancy,_ she thought without any particular care. A door, leading presumably to the bedroom and bathroom, stood almost directly in front of her. The closet and door out of his apartment were to the far right.

"When you said you cared for me," Sakura began, speaking to a point just to the right of Kakashi, "Exactly how much?" Her eyes slid to meet his.

"You want a place to stay," Kakashi concluded, though Sakura found herself wishing he had actually answered her question.

"Yes," she said, "Not for a really long time, not even until the repairs on my building are finished, I don't even know how long that's going to take. My landlady said it would probably be a while, but how long is a while? Like, a few days or a week or a month? I have no idea, but I only need to spend the night, because in the morning I can go to Tsunade-Sama and—"

"Sakura," he interrupted her rambling monologue, his eyes dancing with amusement, "Don't worry about it. You can stay here as long as you'd like."

"Thank you," she mumbled, dragging her tired body towards the inviting couch.

"No, no," he protested, "You can have my bed, I'll take the couch."

Sakura looked up at him with wide eyes, and said, "Sensei, I couldn't possibly—"

"Yes, you can," he interrupted her again. Sakura watched as he eyed her wet figure momentarily. "I don't suppose you have any clothes you can change into?"

"All of my stuff is either soaking or destroyed, and I don't have any of it with me," she said, yawning again. He looked in her eyes, his own dancing with amusement once again.

"So, what happened to your cat?" He asked her, the corner of his mouth twitching under his mask.

"Shut up…" Sakura mumbled, all to grateful as he motioned her to follow him to the bedroom. She had only begun to notice how cold she was.

After rummaging around in a chest of drawers (*_I* used to have a chest of drawers,_ Sakura thought enviously in her tired state), he produced an oversized black shirt and tossed it to her.

"I don't need pants," she told him, as he had turned back to rummage in a different drawer. Suddenly, what Sakura had said suddenly sunk into her own ears, and she hurried to rectify the situation. "Not that I sleep half-naked, or anything! This shirt is just pretty long, and I don't…"

She trailed off, not really knowing what she was going to say.

"I'm… going to go change," she decided, taking the door to the left of the bed that could only lead to the bathroom. 

She emerged minutes later, feeling delightfully dry, with the exception of her panties—she had attempted to ring the water out of them, but to little avail. She didn't exactly want to ask her sensei if she could borrow some boxers (_Does he even wear boxers?_), and they weren't _that_ wet. As she walked back into the bedroom, Kakashi had just finished pulling on his own pajamas. He was wearing black sweatpants and another one of the shirts that covered half of his face. _God, does he wear anything other than black?_ Sakura wondered, not failing to be disappointed at the fact that he apparently _did _sleep with a mask on every night.

_Doesn't he like to breathe freely? I wonder if he takes it off during sex… probably not…_

Sakura shook the cumbersome thoughts out of her head, self-consciously crawling under the duvet while simultaneously trying to cover her butt. The shirt that she had been given turned out to be shorter on her than she had presumed. As she snuggled sleepily under the covers, Kakashi made his way to the light switch, his wet clothes bundled in his arms.

"Kakashi-sensei… thank you," she breathed, as the lights went out. He was smiling down at her, and the warmth that she felt coming off of him at that moment was tangible enough to stuff into a jar and stick underneath her bed. _My water-logged, permanently damaged bed… _She rolled over and felt sleep take her before she could hear him whisper _of course_ and close the door quietly on his way out.


End file.
